Breaking the Code in a Nefarious Dem/Feminist Plot to Encourage Something Called "Voting"

I do not love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. I love a good conspiracy theory way more than the next guy. I know my conspiracy theories. Conspiracy Theories R Me.

For me, the most fun ones, because of the puzzle-solving element, are the riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas, conspiracies in which one plot is nested inside another.

Locally, of course, I can't hold my breath and wait for a plot from a John Le Carre novel. I have to make due with what's available. That's why these last few days I have been amusing myself by trying to solve the Dallas County voter registration conspiracy.

Maybe we can get Mel Gibson to play Jim in the movie version of this story, if we can talk him down out of his tree. (Do we mean Mel or Jim is in a tree? Yes.)

Local Republicans are accusing local Democrats of engaging in a nefarious conspiracy to encourage young people to vote. The Republicans say they have uncovered a kind of Moscow-rules operation in which local Democrats have been working with a shadow group called, "The League of Women Voters."

Together with this so-called league, the Democrats, according to the Republican conspiracy theory, are deliberately targeting members of a little known sub-population called "public school students." They are encouraging these so-called students to take part in a community-organized, socialist, anti-Colonialist activity called "voting."

This so-called voting is an activity which involves, according to the Republicans, the deliberate casting (hurling?) of what are called "ballots." The bottom-line, the Republicans say, is that this conspiracy of Democrats and women is a clandestine attempt to get people to engage in an activity that knowledgeable sources and insiders describe as "politics."

Dallas County Republican Chairman Wade Emmert told Channel 8 WFAA investigative reporter Brett Shipp earlier this week: "... when you seek out areas that have more intense numbers of one political party over another, like public schools, then clearly you have a political purpose."

Damn it! And with children!

But, wait. This is where Inspector Schutzeau comes in. I have been doing some very hard thinking about this, some very clever unwrapping of mysteries inside enigmas, a lot of meticulous un-nesting of little Russian dolls, and guess what I think I've found! No, really. See if you can guess! Guess!

Oh, you got it! That's it exactly! The Republican accusation of a Democrat/women conspiracy to encourage young people to engage in the common duties of citizenship doesn't add up. It doesn't quite make sense. There must be something more to it!

How did I figure that out? C'mon, I know you're dying for me to tell you. OK, I confess. I didn't actually figure it out myself. I owe my big light bulb moment to Jan Sanders. Mrs. Sanders is a volunteer for the League of Women Voters who was caught by a reporter for The Dallas Morning News deliberately trying to register teenagers to vote at the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center high school. In a story in today's Morning News, Sanders is quoted justifying her actions by saying, "It's kind of like, are you against motherhood and apple pie? I mean, nothing is more all-American than the process of registering and voting and participating in our democracy."

In the interests of objectivity and full disclosure, the News reveals to readers this morning that Sanders' passion for mothers and pie could possibly have a little something to do with the fact that she is, in fact as the paper reports, "the widow of U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders, who presided over the watershed court case that desegregated Dallas schools."

Aha! Of course! Mom! Apple pie! Desegregation!

But then I took it the next step. What on earth is wrong with mom? Or apple pie or voting? Or, for that matter, desegregation? And that question was what brought me to the big break-through.

Nothing is wrong with those things! Nothing at all! In fact, mom is good. Apple pie is good. Desegregation is good. And the well-being and long-term stability of the entire American system of government, not to mention the moral philosophical underpinnings of the society, are based on voting.

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So how could it be bad to encourage young people to vote? Or any people, for that matter? And then it came to me. It's not!

So what's really going on? What is the matryoshka doll nested inside the Republican accusation of a Democrat/women conspiracy to encourage voting by public school students? What are the Republicans really worried about? What is the mystery all mushed up inside an enigma and so on?

Damn it. I am so close to that final step. I will let you know when I solve it. I suspect it has something to do with the upcoming election and Mitt Romney getting caught saying half the people in the country are losers. It must be tied into some kind of strategy in which the Republicans figure they can neutralize the effect of all that if they can just find a way to keep the loser half of the nation from voting.

But there I go again. Got the old tin-foil hat on, don't I? I admit it. I just love this stuff. Calisthenics for the brain. I'll let you know if I figure it out, and if you figure it out ahead of me we'll arrange a double-blind drop with a cut-out so you can pass the information on to me.

Jim Schutze has been the city columnist for the Dallas Observer since 1998. He has been a recipient of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ national award for best commentary and Lincoln University’s national Unity Award for writing on civil rights and racial issues. In 2011 he was admitted to the Texas Institute of Letters.